NATO prepares for a conflict with China
Beijing has an idiotic plan to fight inflation
And the Communist Party has a new baby making policy
That and more on this week’s China News Headlines
Welcome
to China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell.
This episode is sponsored by Surfshark. Whenever you go online,
especially to look into controversial topics like government cover ups,
you should be using a VPN like Surfshark to protect your identity.
The US was big mad about that Chinese spy balloon earlier this month.
So much so, that US Secretary of State Antony
Blinken postponed his trip to Beijing in retaliation.
Which had to have felt good for Blinken.
There’s nothing better than finding an excuse to cancel plans.
But that hasn’t actually stopped Blinken from meeting with Chinese officials.
He met with Foreign Minister Wang Yi last Saturday on the
sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
How did that meeting go?
According to the US side, Blinken told Wang that the spy balloon was
an “unacceptable violation of US sovereignty.”
But according to the Chinese side, the US shooting down the balloon was “an
abuse of the use of force and violation of customary international practice.”
In other words, the US and China are definitely not seeing eye to eye.
Speaking of not seeing eye to eye, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
After that conference in Munich, Wang Yi went to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin.
I don’t know what they said in private. But in public,
“Putin said that ‘Russian-Chinese relations were proceeding as planned.’”
And Wang Yi said, “a crisis is always an opportunity.”
Hmmm… based on that I assume in private they talked about how
their favorite Game of Thrones character was Little Finger.
And the line is “chaos is a ladder,” not “crisis is an opportunity,” you newb.
What are Sino-Russian relations like now, a year after the Ukraine invasion?
Especially in the context of China and Russia continuing to be BFFs?
Daaaaw, look. They even made each other friendship bracelets.
That’d be adorable if they weren’t monsters.
Well, the US is warning China not to send weapons to Russia for the Ukraine war.
For context, the US *is* sending weapons to Ukraine for its defense. And President
Biden went to Kyiv to meet with the Ukrainian president this week.
However, China claims to be neutral in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Which is
why the financial sanctions the US applies to Russia are not also being applied to China.
But if China were actually sending weapons to Russia,
that would clearly be taking sides. And that would mean the US’s relationship
with China would have to change, too. Like by expanding the Russia sanctions to China.
According to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “U.S. intelligence *suggests*
China is *considering* providing arms and ammunition to Russia.”
Doesn’t mean that’s happening, though. It’s just a “maybe they’re considering it.”
Well, no duh they’re *considering* it. That’s the level of intelligence the US collected?
Get off the couch and do some real digging, Blinken!
And the US population might be a bit reluctant to take what US intelligence says at its word,
given how they were burned with that whole Iraq-WMDs thing twenty years ago.
The North Americas remember.
Meanwhile, NATO is already gearing up for a possible conflict with China.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said this week,
“What is happening in Europe today could happen in Asia tomorrow.”
By which he means China might try to invade Taiwan. Tomorrow… Figuratively! Figuratively.
I have to clarify because the people of Taiwan are justifiably on edge right
now because China might actually try to invade Taiwan. Tomorrow.
Speaking at that same Munich Security Conference, Stoltenberg said,
“The war in Ukraine has made clear the danger of over-reliance on authoritarian
regimes...We should not make the same mistake with China and other authoritarian regimes.”
He told his audience that it’s maybe not so good for the West
to be relying on Chinese goods, or exporting key technologies to China.
I’m really glad he said that. The same thing I’ve been saying for ten years.
This feels like when a friend tells you that The Wire is great. Of course it is!
I’ve been trying to get you into it for a decade now! Better late than never, I guess.
And after the break, China’s response to Covid “has created a miracle in human history.”
Welcome back.
Remember when China solved Covid? Wait, you don’t? Because Chinese Communist Party leaders do.
Last week they announced that China has achieved a major, decisive victory in its Covid response.
Basically, the Chinese Communist Party is saying they were right to lock down
major cities in the beginning. Then they were right to open them up, showing how much better
they were at pandemic response than the rest of the world. Then they were right again when they
implemented their harsh Zero Covid policy, and set up all those quarantine camps. And finally,
they were right to suddenly end Zero Covid at the end of last year after
cases started exploding across the country and they realized they couldn’t stop Covid.
In other words, the Communist Party’s response to Covid “has created a miracle in human
history.” Because they’ve successfully pulled through a pandemic, with hardly anyone dying.
At least, hardly anyone *officially* dying.
But congratulations *are* in order. China did manage to perform one miracle.
They miraculously announced a
Mission Accomplished more embarrassing than this one.
But while China calls its Covid response a ‘miracle
in human history,’ the data isn’t so clear.
Because they’ve intentionally stopped counting Covid cases.
“Chinese health authorities stopped releasing figures for so-called
asymptomatic cases nationwide late last year, as they dismantled the countries’
extensive Covid-19 mass testing apparatus and allowed people to test and recover at home.”
And if there's no data, then no one got sick or died, right?
The same way no one died in Tiananmen Square, and no one ever questions that.
Mission accomplished.
But one thing the Communist Party can’t hide is how badly their economy is crashing.
The property sector, for example,
is doing so badly that—as Caixin Magazine put it—it’s just barrels of red ink.
Which sounds like the aftermath of Judge Doom melting Clifford the Big Red Dog.
Not what you want to hear from a financial forecast.
Property sales dropped more than 28% last year.
And only 5% of property businesses turned profits.
Which sounds like...a great time to invest in China!
Sadly, I’m not joking.
Because China is now trying to encourage
foreign investment in its real estate sector through private equity funds.
And of course they’re going to bite. Because no matter how hard or for how
long I’ve been trying to tell everyone, some folks just won’t watch The Wire.
The way private equity funds work is, they use piles of cash to buy up dying companies at low
prices. Then they restructure them, and hopefully fix the companies so they can be profitable again.
Which is why “China has officially given the green light for the establishment of
property-focused private equity...funds.”
In other words, the Communist Party wants Western companies to dump piles
of cash to fix the real estate problem the Communist Party created. If it works,
China gets bailed out with foreign money. If it fails, China still keeps the cash.
So if you’ve got millions of dollars lying around, and you’re stupid, this is a great opportunity!
And an even better opportunity is giving that money to me,
in exchange for some swampland in Narnia. That investment is just as likely to work out for you.
Speaking of money, China is seeing high levels of inflation. Especially in Beijing,
where food prices rose 6.6% over the past year.
Well, the Beijing municipal government has a
solution. They’re going to give the poorest residents of the city...
$6 a month to fight inflation. That’s 40 yuan. And the public says it’s not enough!
But I say, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Even if that gift horse shut down your factory or took away your business during
Covid. Take your $6 a month and shut up. It’s enough to buy an entire bowl of noodles!
...for the 2% of Beijing residents who qualify for the program.
(Math: Article says “more than 300,000” and Beijing has 21 million residents)
Waiting for your grandmother to send you a $5 check for your birthday is a more feasible
financial plan. At least it would be, if China’s covid policies hadn’t killed all the grandmas.
And after the break, China’s Navy is building way more ships than the US.
Welcome back.
The Pentagon’s top China official Michael Chase has paid a rare visit to Taiwan this week.
He’s one of only two top Pentagon officials who’ve visited Taiwan in four decades.
The other visit was in 2019, during the Trump administration.
The point of the trip, obviously, was to anger China. And, I assume,
to eat some of the delicious Tainan beef hotpot!
The Pentagon declined to comment on Chase’s trip. But they stressed that US support for
Taiwan “remains aligned against the current threat posed by the People’s Republic of China.”
So the US isn’t officially changing its China policy. Like,
by recognizing Taiwan as a country. Or by setting up a military base there.
Or by officially promising to come to Taiwan’s aid if China attacks.
But at least this visit is...
something? Grow a spine, America. Go all in on your support. Seriously.
Isn’t this worth going to war over?
Hopefully there is no war with China,
though. Because the US can’t keep up with China’s warship building.
That’s according to Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro.
He said China has a larger fleet than the US, and they’re deploying that fleet globally.
The US Navy fleet is just under 300 ships,
whereas China’s is already at 340. And China is building new ships a lot faster than the US is.
Of course, US troops have better training,
with a lot more veterans. But that could eventually change, too.
Which I guess means that if China is going to attack Taiwan, better sooner than later,
when they have even more ships. Right? They could attack tomorrow. Figuratively! Figuratively!
According to Australia’s former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull,
China is carrying out ‘blatant’ influence operations there.
Australia does have a law for this that parliament passed in
2018. It’s called the “foreign influence transparency scheme”, or “Fits” for short.
Yes, even Australian lawmakers come up with dumb acronyms for their bills.
The only difference between American and Australian politicians is that when Australians
flush money down the toilet, it spins counterclockwise.
In theory, Fits requires people to register any activities they do on behalf of a foreign
group, or to influence political or government affairs. But in practice,
it fails to capture the subtle things the CCP is really good at.
The kind of influence operations that don’t fall under Fits reporting requirements.
Turnbull complained that “According to the transparency register there is apparently
no organization in Australia that has any association with the united front
work department of the Communist party of China.”
In other words, the CCP has figured out how to get around Fits.
For example, they influence people through people and groups that don’t
officially have a China connection. So that doesn’t get put in the system.
A Senior Fellow at ANU described it like this:
“The way Fits is at the moment, it might be capturing a former minister on a BBC cooking
show but not capturing former politicians with dealings with a company like Huawei.”
So, props to Australia on the foreign interference law. Not so much for the implementation.
This is like trying to get in shape by joining Planet Fitness and only going on free pizza day.
Might need to change your plans to meet your goals.
And over in Canada, the military has tracked Chinese surveillance in the Arctic.
Because if anyone’s equipped to handle the Arctic,
it’s Canada. I honestly can’t tell if that’s the South Pole or Saskatchewan.
Apparently, China had installed a bunch of buoys to track activity
in the region. But the Canadian government isn’t keen to give out more information on
what they found. Except to say they’ve stopped many of them.
China is not an Arctic nation, but it does put a lot of resources into the Arctic Circle,
including using it for shipping, and for conducting what it calls “scientific research.”
But “Experts say that China’s research interests
in the region have also doubled as attempts to surveil military assets in the Arctic.”
And no one is surprised. Not even the polar bears. Even they saw that one coming.
China has a demographic crisis. Not enough children are being born. That’s thanks in
part to a poorly thought-out one-child policy that led to more than 300 million abortions.
And it turns out, lifting the one-child policy 8 years ago was not enough to turn things around.
So now they are trying to get people to have *more* children with a new policy.
That is, some Chinese provinces are giving couples as much as 30 days
of paid 'marriage leave'...to start making babies.
Which goes to show, the Communist Party won’t even leave you alone on your honeymoon.
And considering how much they spy on their own citizens, I wouldn’t be surprised if
They make the pregnancy announcement for you. Hey, look. Another miracle.
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Once again, I’m Chris Chappell. Thanks for watching China Uncensored.